Thank You

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Hell hath no fury like a frequent flier. The collective wrath of this interest group over politically inspired flight delays caused a major miracle on Capitol Hill. Feuding Republicans and Democrats left their ideological trenches and joined hands in no man's land to pass a corrective measure. This bipartisan legislating occurred so quickly—in less than 24 hours—that to watchers accustomed to gridlock it appeared to be a record.

Life for travelers stuck on the nation's tarmacs was bad and getting much worse. The airline, hotel, and resort industries were howling that a customer backlash against air travel would hurt their bottom lines and damage the fragile economy.

Airlines for America, a trade group, says its industry generates $1 trillion in annual economic activity and nearly 10 million well-paying U.S. jobs, contributing more than 5% of gross domestic product.

The Federal Aviation Administration, architect of the confusion in the sky, had secretly warned the commercial-airline industry that as many as 6,000 flights in a single day could be delayed in the event of a major storm, owing to furloughs of air traffic controllers to meet budget-reduction targets set by the budget sequester.

The existing record for flight delays is 3,000, set last July 26 as a result of a massive line of thunderstorms that swept across the Upper Midwest through the Northeast.

FLIGHT DELAYS ARE A FACT OF LIFE, but they became more frequent after the FAA began furloughing air-traffic controllers on April 21. The agency reported on Thursday that there were staffing challenges in major control centers in all parts of the country: "Controllers will space planes farther apart so they can manage traffic with current staff, which will lead to delays at airports including Newark, LaGuardia, JFK, Chicago O'Hare, Regional South West, and Tampa."

The FAA said last Wednesday that more than 863 flights were delayed by staffing reductions resulting from furloughs; it blamed "weather and other factors" for an additional 2,132 delays.

Passengers last week complained of being stuck in planes on runways for two hours or more. Business meetings had to be canceled. Trials had to be postponed. The FAA privately advised carriers to tell passengers traveling to an event on a Saturday that it would be prudent for them to leave on a Thursday, according to an airline-industry lobbyist. That's about how long it takes to travel on Amtrak's California Zephyr from Chicago to Emeryville, Calif.

This friendly FAA advice suggests a cavalier attitude toward the travel industry and the flying public, and indicates a stunning miscalculation in weighing the consequences of its actions.

The administration bears responsibility for this fiasco. Senate Democrats in March blocked a Republican amendment to the sequestration legislation that would have allowed the FAA more latitude to cut other parts of its budget, eliminating the need to furlough air-traffic controllers.

The administration wanted to use flight delays to force the GOP into accepting a budget deal that would raise tax rates on the wealthy. President Obama assumed that the traveling public would blame Republicans for refusing to accept the deal. Instead, he discovered that the ire of airline passengers recognizes no political divisions.

The White House, which sneered at the earlier GOP amendment, now expresses a willingness to sign the measure even while denigrating it as "a Band-Aid solution" to the sequester.